Simply maintaining a belief in the existence of legitimate conflict, and making allowance for it even in the midst of a heated debate, is a very liberal sensibility. It’s worth claiming as our own and holding onto, even (especially) when it is most tempting to discard it.

The stakes are high, and can be encapsulated in this predicament: Will Egypt complete the transition from Mubarak’s authoritarian regime to a consolidated democracy or will it eventually — soon — produce another authoritarian regime, this one dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, its allies and the military?

You can assess these arguments on their own. But I would say that the agenda at the upper echelon of the Democratic Party has narrowed over the past 50 years, and it’s not like the safety net is so stable and robust that there’s nothing more to do. In fact, our social safety net is among the tiniest in the industrialized world. But poor people don’t have lobbyists, and that’s how Washington works these days.

Instead of setting clear limits, or just banning multiple types of antibiotics for use in livestock (as this legislation from Louise Slaughter would do), the FDA just prescribed “voluntary limits.” Why? Because they’ve been trying to ban antibiotics in livestock since 1977. And agribusiness along with pharmaceutical companies lobby against it, and it doesn’t happen. So we’re reduced to begging drugmakers to stop facilitating the fact that the hamburger on our plates is filled with penicillin and tetracycline.

Dayen gives his assessment of yesterday’s election results. Election Day 2011 is over, and the victories for Democrats – and more accurately, for liberal values – across the country largely shared a characteristic – they were successful defensive actions to stave off extremely draconian conservative objectives.

The President statement yesterday in Las Vegas on the Administration’s new refinancing initiative was circumspect about their claims. There’s a debate now about how effective and far reaching this will be, with some arguing it could have a significant economic effect, and others far more skeptical.

One thing many people aren’t factoring into this budget debate is the fact that it will be happening in a Presidential election season. The more established GOP candidates have begun to enter the race, and they will need to get votes from conservative backers. Therefore they will push the public conversation increasingly to the right.

The era of liberalism as a philosophy of government is over. The Democratic Party endorses this message.

Sadly, the actions of politicians in Washington are often more about ripping off the public to benefit a handful of well-connected and extremely wealthy donors while having little to do with any form of actual ideology or governing philosophy. In fact, nearly identical schemes to enrich large corporations at the expense of the public are used by both parties. The parties then take turns pretending this policy design is an outrage against conservatism or liberalism.

Michael Gerson of the Washington Post Editorial page really phones one in today. I know it is the day after Thanksgiving and there is a tendency to just rehash old arguments in an effort to get a column or blog post out, but really this is beautiful example of false equivalency and intellectual laziness topped with a cherry of partisan world view.